Vortex | Daniel Canogar

Art On welcomes the Istanbul Biennial with Daniel CANOGAR, a globally renowned new media artist

Art On opens the art season simultaneously with the Istanbul Biennial with Daniel Canogar’s first solo exhibition in Turkey. Canogar is among of the first names that come to mind in the world of new media art.

Last year Art On housed Canogar’s installation titled “Spin” at its booth though Contemporary Istanbul. The new exhibition will take place at the gallery venue on 10 September – 5 October.

The exhibition titled “Vortex” covers photographs and installations by Canogar, whose works have also been included in the collection of Borusan Art Center. Among the works to be exhibited are photos edited with a unique narrative language, reflecting the relationship between the individual and the commonplace and daily life objects.

In “Vortex” Canogar presents photos he produces manifesting a “distinctive” relation between readymade object and the individual along with his video installation titled “Spin”, he designed using CDs, again in the context of daily life objects. Among the objects Canogar uses in his works, we find plastic bottlesi CDs, VHS tapes, old tapes, cables and even bathtubs. Through the video projections the artist projects on the surface of these objects, he redefines their functions, attributing them a new form and dynamism.

Canogar defines his art as: “My most recent sculptural installations are constructed with discarded electronic materials: computer, telephone and electric cables, thousands of burnt-out bulbs, meters of videotape, old slot machines, celluloid, DVDs, etc. The installations explore the short life expectancy of the technologies we cast off and their relationship to organic mortality. These installations also seek to reanimate the lifeless. Light animations projected onto the installations appear to free the energy stored in the electronic waste, awakening in it memories of its past. Through my work I try to bring dead materials back to life, reveal their secrets, revive the collective memory they contain to construct an accurate portrait of a society and an age.”

Canogar explains the content of his works to be exhibited at Art On as follows: “With all the forms that purifies it, water stands as an aesthetical component for me. As a natural force that drags its surroundings Vortices (Vortex) is the backbone of my work in photo series. “Vortices” was inspired by the “Great Pacific Garbage Vortex”, a vast accumulation of marine debris floating at or just below the water’s surface in the Pacific. The accumulation is approaching the dimensions of the European continent. This waste will not only remain where it is for the foreseeable future, it is also growing at an alarming rate, fed by the worldwide production and disposal of plastic goods. Vortices is an attempt to offer a depiction of the victims and perpetrators of this environmental disaster.”

Daniel Canogar’s “Vortex” can be visited at Art On Istanbul from 10 September to 5 October, 2013.